I’m starting to make the Little House Needleworks ABC Samplers – a set of nine smalls to stitch, which will look great as a collection when they’re done.
The fabric I chose to use for these is a 32 count evenweave from 123stitch.com called Country French Mocha linen by Wichelt (part of my big stash haul from January 2019). It’s a lovely soft fabric in a warm beige – the called-for fabric for these designs. I also used the called-for threads – mainly Classic Colorworks overdyed threads, with a few DMC shades too. I bought the charts and threads from Peakside Needleworks in the UK.
These charts were the first ‘caving in’ of my New Year Resolution not to buy any more embroidery things in 2019 (it didn’t last long at all!!). I just couldn’t resist these, as I just love smalls anyway, and anything with little buildings on in particular. So, they’ve been sitting in my stash since then.
They have only a 4 x 4 inches stitched area, so they don’t take long to do – that’s my justification, anyway.
I decided to do this one first – the one featuring the letters LMN – so I sorted the threads and fabric, and then changed my mind! The tidy part of me just couldn’t start half way through the alphabet!
So, I began with the ABC one instead, and I’m now going to do them in the PROPER order!
I like to colour in black and white symbol charts with coloured pencils before I start stitching, as my brain can make more sense of colours than symbols.
I haven’t used Classic Colorworks threads before. They are nice to stitch with, but I found the gradations of shade changes a bit long and predictable (about half a metre each time), so I cut several pieces of varying lengths, and mixed them up when choosing each thread to use next, so that the gradations didn’t look so regular on my stitched piece.
I got this much stitched in about four hours:
But then I hit a snag. I really dislike stitching with white. It bores me to tears. So, having spent a while getting this far, I got really bored with it, and put it aside, avoiding continuing with it, even though by then I’d done all the white stitching. How stupid is that? Anyway, I eventually got over my stitching block, and finished it off in one long Sunday afternoon.
I decided not to stitch the outer row of crosses as a border that are shown on the chart, as I think that’s more necessary if you’re going to stitch these as one large design, in three rows of three, so that you can work out how to tile the individual houses. As I’m making mine into individual pincushions, I want them to look more like the image on the chart pack, without a border line round the edge.
Now I’ve just got to do the finishing. I’ve chosen a lovely cotton fabric for the backing, from my quilting stash, and a tiny pom pom trim for the edge.
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Janet Granger's Blog 
These are darling little “smalls” as you call them. Makes me itch to stitch! Thank you for sharing!
They’re very tempting to do, because each individual one doesn’t take long, so you ‘get a finish’ quickly!
They would make nice sachet’s to give as gifts.
Yes, they would – but I’d have to make a duplicate from my set if i were to give one as a gift, as I’m too ‘tidy’ to have an incomplete alphabet in my collection!
Love these ‘smalls’ – they are very attractive and could be used or framed in so many ways. Thanks for sharing your methods and materials as well.
There are very nice. Is there a adress or webshop so i can buy them?
I bought mine from https://www.peaksideneedleworks.co.uk/little-house-needleworks.php#!/ABC-Sampler-series/c/20226082/offset=0&sort=normal